


Home for Christmas

by daylighthour



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: AU, Arthur comes back, Avalon - Freeform, Christmas, Christmas fic, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Modern, Pre-Slash, Slash if you squint, Winter, arthur doesn't understand christmas, but that's fine, holiday fic, lake, modernau, ressurection!fic, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 12:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17161952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylighthour/pseuds/daylighthour
Summary: Merlin desperately doesn't want to spend another Christmas alone and unhappy, but it's hard to do otherwise when the gift you want most isn't likely to come along.





	Home for Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like I needed to write something in honor of Christmas, but I didn't have a ton of time, so enjoy a short bit of pure, unadulterated, unedited fluff...

It was Christmas, but Merlin was alone as usual, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. He'd tried keeping company before (one thousand years gave had given him time to experiment), but all company seemed false when the one you truly wanted to see was nowhere to be found. He had his dog, an Irish setter, but that was just to keep him from going completely mad. Some days, when things seemed especially bleak and hope far off, she was the only thing that kept him going.

  
Dogs did a halfway decent job of that, Merlin mused as he took Penny on her evening walk. The first dog he'd tried naming Arthur, but it hurt too much to have yet another Arthur die on him when the time came, so every subsequent one he'd named something still full of remembrance but less conspicuous. Penny, a shortening of Pendragon, would be with him for eleven years come January.

  
Their walks always took them to the lake, around Avalon. Merlin knew he really shouldn't, the trips always ended in disappointment, but deep down he still held out hope his best friend would return to him, and besides, Penny liked the free romp.

  
Today, though, Penny was far from carefree. Barking madly with seemingly no provocation, she strained against her lead, pulling so hard toward the lake that Merlin couldn't even dig in his heels to get a foothold. “Whoa, easy Penny! What is it?”

  
Unable to hold on any longer, he dropped the lead and Penny took off, bolting toward the lakefront. Merlin followed, thinking she had seen a late squirrel or some other animal, but what she had seen was even more shocking. There was someone, emerging sluggishly from the icy banks of the water, and Merlin thought briefly about calling the police before he caught a glimpse of shining metal and a face, a face he'd know anywhere, but it couldn't be--

  
“Arthur!” he called, breaking into a sprint across the snow, closing the distance between them.

  
“Merlin!” Arthur gasped raggedly, still coughing up water from the lake. “What are you doing here?”

  
Merlin knelt beside Arthur, stroking back his wet hair as he caught his breath. “I think I should be asking you that, sire.”

  
Arthur laughed uproariously, in the slight mania of utter disbelief. “Haha, it’s true! They told me I'd come back and look, here I am!” He waved his arms, flexed his fingers, looked down at his side. “Ha, no sword wound or anything!”

  
Arthur was wet and shivering, though, so Merlin shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around Arthur's shoulders, then wound his own scarf around Arthur’s neck. “Come on, you're freezing, I can't get you back only to let you die of hypo--”

  
He was cut off by Arthur falling against him, in a deep hug this time, his arms around Merlin’s neck. “Gods, I've missed you.” He whispered, his breath cold against Merlin’s ear and the nape of his now bare neck. He sniffled, and Merlin felt a wet cheek brush against him. Arthur was crying. “Every day I wanted to come back, but they told me to keep waiting.”

  
“Now the wait is over.” Merlin could barely speak around the lump in his throat as tears spilled down his own cheeks. He held Arthur for a long time, breathing him in. He smelled foremost like a lake, crisp and a bit dirty, but underneath it all he smelled like Arthur, just like the prince he'd served all those years ago, earthy and safe.

  
Merlin sniffled and tried to smile. “This is the best Christmas present I could have asked for.”

  
At this, Arthur finally broke the embrace, pulling back, though he kept his hands on Merlin’s shoulders. His eyes and cheeks were puffy and red. “Christmas?”

  
Merlin laughed softly. “Oh Arthur, you have a lot to learn. Christmas is a new holiday, sort of like Yule. You give presents to everyone you love.”

  
Arthur still looked confused, but a slow smile spread across his lips, deep and genuine. Merlin almost started crying again; he thought he'd never see that smile again. “In that case, I’m glad I came back today.”

  
“As am I.” Merlin took Arthur’s arm. “Come. My house isn't far away. We’ll do our catching up there, in front of the fire.”

  
“One moment,” Arthur said, bending down and hanging his head as though searching in the snow for something. Worry knotted Merlin’s heart; had he lost something? He opened his mouth and was about to ask when a ball of sharp, cold snow hit him square in the jaw.

  
“My bad,” Arthur said, biting his lip in a failing attempt to keep from laughing.

  
Merlin launched himself at Arthur, tackling him and sending them both sprawling in the snow. “Sorry!” Merlin crowed, pinning Arthur by the shoulders. “Didn't see you there!”

  
“You can't do that!” Arthur called, pink-cheeked and fighting his way out of Merlin's grasp. “I thought you missed me!”

  
“Missing you and beating you in a snowball fight aren't mutually exclusive.”

  
The two rolled around in the snow for a while longer, Arthur rapidly gaining the upper hand and pinning Merlin down. Arthur dumped snow on Merlin, and Merlin kicked up as much of the powdery stuff into Arthur's face as he could, until Penny came barreling into them, sending both of them sprawling on their backs.

  
“What the hell is this?” Arthur said, half angry and half chuckling as Penny licked his face mercilessly.

  
“That's my dog, Penny. She's been keeping me company while you took your sweet time getting back to me.”

  
“In that case, get her off me!”

  
Merlin clucked his tongue and called her name, and Penny retreated enough to let Arthur sit up. “Glad to see I’ve been replaced by a dog.”

  
“It's been lonely without you all these years.”

  
“I can only imagine,” Arthur said, turning his gaze to a point far in the distance. “It's been lonely without you. too.”

  
Merlin let them sit in silence for a moment, the only sounds Penny’s panting and the occasional windswept rustle of the snowy pines. After what felt like an eternity, he got to his feet when he could no longer ignore his nor Arthur's shivers.

  
“Come, before we freeze for real.”

  
Arthur extended an hand. “Help me up?”

  
Merlin placed his hand in his, but before he got the chance to pull Arthur up, Arthur yanked him down into a heap of snow next to him.

  
Arthur's deep laughter was the sound of sunshine after months of rain. “Over a thousand years, Merlin, and you still fall for the oldest trick in the book.”

  
Merlin tackled Arthur again, but this time Arthur didn't fight being pinned, merely looked up at Merlin with a kind of disbelieving satisfaction, as if he couldn't believe he really was here, playing around with his friend after all those years.

  
Merlin’s heart melted. “Happy Christmas, Arthur,” he whispered, then realized. “Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting…”

  
Arthur stopped him, a gentle hand cupping Merlin’s cheek. He smiled. “Happy Christmas, Merlin.”


End file.
